


reflections on shattered mirrors.

by spacewars



Series: all lines realign. [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Divergence from Lost Days, Deaf Character, Don't Judge Me, F/M, Jason's Lady Shiva's Son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 02:15:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15547380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacewars/pseuds/spacewars
Summary: Or, Talia Al Ghul isn't a mother till she is one.





	reflections on shattered mirrors.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [Santi](https://sapioromanticriddler.tumblr.com/), who listened to me ramble on about this idea, and then Jason and Dicks, I will fight you any time of day, Brothership and then Batman Cass and Catwoman Steph, because we support Lesbians in this house. You're a good friend, mi amigo, I hope you enjoy my trash.

Talia’s supposed to resemble the dew of Allah, the only tear that has slipped free, the bare witness of humanity in man that should not have one, that creates what is needed, not wanted but when she looks in the mirror, presses her fingers to her cheeks, she thinks that the name would fit someone else, that it’s the wrong name, that it’s not _her_ name, despite how hard she tries. But it’s the only name that she has. And Talia keeps searching  after who she should be, keeps racing after the woman who deserves her name and hopes one day, that woman might stumble, and Talia might be able to catch up.

 

(But Talia doesn’t run fast enough, no matter how hard she trains. And the women never falters.)

 

Talia has an eye on everything and everyone. Ra had taught her to be vigilant, had taught her that her enemies do not sleep and neither should she if she wants to live. He was her teacher before her enemy and the Demon Head before her father. Her phone rings in the crevices of her forgotten pants and, careful not to wake up her Beloved, she slips out onto the balcony, into the thin wisps of moonlight and Gotham air, the moving cars and neon lights, and she picks up the call.

 

Shiva has given birth to not one but two children.

 

(Talia thinks of what it’s like to be a mother, to love someone as much as Ra loves power, as much as Bruce loves Justice and as much as Talia wants freedom.)

 

“I have come with gifts for the child.” Talia says when Shiva appears beside her. The diner is underground, underpopulated and dirty, but it is Gotham, and Talia knows that she can not afford to have both the Court, and Ra’s spies eyes on her, so she does what she must and tries not to let the stench get to her. Shiva snorts when she spots the bag but makes no move to grab it. “So you have gotten my call.”

 

“And the other one?” Talia inquiries, and Shiva stares at the tea beside her. Talia thinks there are emotions hidden in her eyes, flickers of anger, but Shiva is a practiced woman, and whatever it is leaves before Talia can comment. The child is loose in her arms, like he might fall out if not careful.

 

“Cain has already taken her.” The baby gargles at the sound of his father, and Shiva does not move to hush him. Talia thinks it’s the last time, he will be in his mother's arms and thinks that the boy should enjoy it while it lasts.“Surely, he would have taken him too, if he had known he existed.” 

 

“I can not keep him” Shiva explain and the baby cries in Shiva’s arms, sticks his pudgy fingers out of the wraps of his cloth, and cries. Shiva does not move to comfort him, and neither does Talia, she is no mother, she has never had a mother’s touch and will be useless here.  “He is ineffective. He can not hear.”

 

Talia hears what Shiva can’t say, hears the need for Redemption in her soul, but Talia is no angel, she can not perform miracles, she can not give the boy a world where he is happy, and safe.“You will leave him to die?” Talia ask and Shiva frowns, but there is recognition in her eyes and Talia knows that those words were not foreign to her, that the thought had passed her mind more then once.

 

“I will need you to smuggle him - away.” Shiva stares at the boy, there is no motherly instinct in her eyes, no sense of anything but her arms tighten against the child, meaning everything and nothing at the same time. “I do not care what you do. As long as there is no connection between him or Cain. Or. Him and Me.”

 

And Talia swallows, thinks of herself as a child, of the scars on the underside of her belly, of the thin acid marks on her ribs and thinks of the wide eyes of the boy in front of her. The world is cruel, but Talia has always been the dew, has always had the ability to stick on, but she can not promise the same for the boy. 

 

“I will take him. Put him somewhere safe.”And Talia thinks of the many dew drops on the leaves, thinks of the ones that are close to slipping through  and falling, thinks of the way they splatter soundlessly on the pavements and she laughs inside, chuckle at the idea of falling to anything, of being touchable to anyone and let’s the mirth of nothing wipe the image from her mind. “There will be no connection that this even happened.”

 

“I will owe you a favor.”

 

(She has kept secrets from Ra, and she lets Jason be one of them. She funnels him away until she is ready, tells the people underneath her to hand the baby to one of the initiates and tells them not to breathe a word to Ra. She picks Willis out with care, a thug, one that no one notices in Gotham and one that holds no connection to the world that the boy's parents came from. )

 

She thinks nothing of the baby for years, has her agents keep tabs just in case Shiva shows, but she doesn’t, not now anyway and Talia relaxes into the hold of daily life. She visits Gotham for her Beloved, watches him grow from age, and disparity,  watches the Robin fly from the nest, and the new one, to her surprise take his place. She thinks nothing of it, until she finds the boy beside her in one of her and Bruce's adventure. His eyes are narrow and untrustful like Cain and she can see the small bundles of freckles dusted across his cheeks like Shiva. 

 

“Do you worry about this one, Beloved?” She asks, it’s late at night, and Talia is tired, tired of arguing with him about how his place is beside her, beside the Demon’s head Daughter and instead take’s the pleasure in tangling her fingers in his, feeling the warmth of someone else, someone that she loves and someone  that she will miss when she returns back to Ra.“You must be careful.”

 

“Being Unable to hear does not make him less. You and I both know that Talia.” And she does, she know that fighting isn’t about what’s in your ears, what sounds travel through you, it’s about what’s in your gut, it’s the decision to move, split second, it’s the fight or flight. But Bruce has not figured out what Talia knows, that putting the boy here is dangerous and knows that Shiva interest in him will be peaked and if not her, then Cain. But Talia had given her word and she presses her mouth together when Bruce says, “He is my son.”

 

“Not by blood.”

 

And Bruce frowns, presses his lips to the meat of Talia’s knuckles, to where at the age of seven, she had broken the nose and the neck of her trainer for her father, where at the age of sixteen, she had broken another for not following her order and at the age of twenty eight, had creased the cheeks of her beloved. “Blood is not always needed for family.”

 

(Talia finds out she’s pregnant, finds out that she’s not alone, and Ra finds out before her Beloved, who never finds out at all.)

 

She keeps it silent, presses the words onto the roof of her mouth when she thinks of bringing it up but doesn’t. Bruce, her Beloved would want to take him away, give him the life that her son can not have. Betray the Al Ghul’s - Ra’s name.

 

(She will not leave her child or her Beloved to Ra’s anger.)

 

When Damian is seven, the news of the second Robin’s death travels through the grapevine and onto her ears. She stares at Damian’s pudgy face, stares at the way he furrowed his eyebrows just like her Beloved and thinks of starting his training. He is young, too young, but he can grip knives, and swords just fine. Can dodge and move away just as quickly. But he is a child, and Talia does not want to take away from him what she never had.

 

Talia is a mother, but she is not a loving mother, doesn’t know how to be one, doesn’t know how to make Damian the man the universe wants him to be and the one Ra wishes. Talia has never been a creator, she has always destroyed, has always been good at destruction, her's or someone else's and Talia's too afraid to make, someone, Damian.

 

“I will take his training in my hands,” Ra says, and Talia remembers the broken knuckles, the empty mats, the crocked bodies, the scars she can’t touch, and doesn’t want to. Talia remembers the battlefield of scars she is now, and stares at the boy asleep beside her. She doesn't want that for him, she wants better and Damian deserves better.

 

“I could do just fine, Father.”

 

(She wins, and Ra coincides, and Talia stares at the boy in her arms and mourns for her son the best way she knows how. Silently.)

 

Training Damian through childhood is easy. She teaches him without affection. She knows that Ra is waiting, biding his time for Talia to mess up, for Talia to make a mistake and care too much, to be a mother to a boy that meant to be a warrior, that’s meant for something more. And Talia doesn’t. She leaves Damian to the universe, becomes the mother in the shadows, becomes what Damian needs, not what he wants and Talia thinks that she would crinkle her nose at the woman she is now.

 

She’s alone when the call comes through, alone in Nanda Parbat, alone because her Beloved is a stubborn man who needs time and Talia is a patient women. A Robin walking the streets, a trained warrior in the shadows, brain dead, unresponsive, and Talia grips her hands against the banister of her bedroom, and whispers, “Bring him here. Let no one see you leave. And let no one know he is alive.”

 

(She does it because she is a mother, she does it because perhaps her Beloved will join her side if two of his son’s are already here, she does it because Talia fights dirty and Talia has never lost.)

 

The boy is gone, a empty shell, and Talia feels her gut tighten, feels the fist the universe makes around it when he moves no movement, no sound, when she sits beside him. She hears through the whispers that Cain’s prodigy had ran off, she makes a motion for her assassins to keep on eye on her, and she tells the same to Jason, presses her fingers to his wrist. That is sister after all, even if Jason doesn’t know. And Talia feels some kinship with the child, even if she does think it's misplaced.

 

He does not flinch, does not fight back. The boy is somewhere in there, shattered, hidden, afraid, but Talia if anything is a patient women, and she will find Jason from the shel and break it if she has too. She makes him look at her while she speaks. Perhaps somewhere deep down, the boy can still read lips and understands when she says, “I have my people looking out for her.”

 

Jason doesn’t say anything, just watches Talia face, his eyes tracking her every movement and Talia sighs, and tells the boy of his Brother Damian, confides in him of her Beloved’s antics, shares the tales of pain her Beloved had put himself through when he had lost Jason and she keeps talking, so lost in her own thoughts that she almost misses the tear that rolls down his cheeks.

 

(Worse comes to worse, and Talia takes Jason in her own hands, curses the boy with anger, curses him with something that is incomprehensible to the regular mind. Talia takes a breath, watches the shell of a warrior, the shell of a boy stare at the green water with no emotions and pushes him in.)

 

Talia stares at the boy, thinks of the baby Shiva had discarded, had bargened with her about, thinks of the boy who couldn’t speak but had watched to Talia ramble and she thinks of the boy in front of her, eyes painted green with anger, a mask she had seen on Shiva’s face many years ago and wonders if she's somehow apart of his downfall.

 

He doesn’t make a move to attack her when she sits beside him, although she does not miss the way his first tighten and untighten. She presses her fingers over them, soft, and Jason turns, his eyes scanning her for words that she had not quite said.  “I have saved you, Jason. From a world that would not have accepted you.”

 

“I don’t care, Talia.” Jason signs, and Talia nods, opens her mouth to comfort him, but his fingers are quick, and angry, and sharp, and Talia’s ASL may be dusty, but she knows the gist of what he says. “Just, I need to talk to Bruce okay-”

 

“Not right now,”Talia repremends, and Jason stops fidgeting, stops messing around with his hands, and stares at her, “The pit madness is to strong. To set you out there would be dangerous. You are a danger to Bruce, and the rest of them.”

 

“And what about you?”

 

“I have experience where Bruce does not.” Jason says nothing, just lets his palms move to his chest in disbelief.  And Talia shrugs, stares ahead at the garden of Nanda Parbat, and the way the wind makes the leaves ruffle, this place is her home but she has never been safe here and she can not promise that to Jason either. “I have grown up around the Pit, and it’s madness. As soon as you are well, I promise to return you to your father, Jason.”

 

“Let me ask Bruce.” Jason signs and Talia frowns, she had always heard the second Robin had been stubborn, had fought Bruce to his core, had challenged him in everything but it was different seeing it now, seeing a boy who had died still fight. “You got a cellphone I could use?”

 

(The next day she tells him that the Joker is still alive, watching the way Jason face contorts in pain, watches the thin wave of anger, of betrayal, of pain in Jason’s eyes and she looks away. He doesn’t ask to call Bruce again.)

 

Ra’s angry, angry enough that Talia presses a bag to Jason slips one of her daggers onto Jason’s bag and her own, and tells him that they must leave, that Bruce is no longer an option till Jason can control himself, and the Demon Head wains out of his anger. Her signing is messy, and Jason furrows his eyebrows,takes one look at her face and nods, making a motion to pass him the backpack. 

 

(Leaving is easy, and she tunnels Jason far away from Ra’s wraith. Just as she had done before.)

 

“Bruce says we don’t kill-”

 

“And yet you had died.” She grasps his hands, places it in hers like she would a child, like she would Damian, like she would her own blood and Jason tenses but does not move away, makes no move to takes his hands from hers. He watches her mouth when she says, “He does not wish to kill, but those still die in his defense. Be better than that, Jason. We eradicate, We purify.”

 

And Jason looks away, closes his eyes so that he can't read Talia's lips. She smiles at him, presses the meat of her fingers to the bones of Jason hands till they grind together, till he’s forced to look at her, and face the truth of the world they live in and not her Beloved's ideals.It is harsh but Talia is no loving mother. “We are the world’s only hope.”

 

(Jason is slow, but the pit is breaking him. Talia can tell.)

 

She keeps a eye on Damian, not a stern one, Talia is no loving mother, and if the boy messes up then she lets him, has the tutors correct him. She does not wish to raise her child with her Beloved this way. She wants to be Talia, dew of God, she wants to be her name with her child, she wants to be that woman with her child and every other good thing that comes with it. And she tries for Damian, shields him from Ra the best she can and presses the hard truth into him young.

 

He has not killed, not yet, and Talia finds hope in that. But Damian time is running out, She was ten when Ra gives her first kill, she slides a knife in her trainer’s rib while Ra watches. He doesn’t say anything, when she’s finish, just nods, and presses the two sets of  knife in her hand. It is his first gift he gives her, not the last. And now that she is gone, Ra will move on, will do the same to Damian. And Talia tells a teacher to train him in poisons, nothing deadly, but far away from Ra's anger, far away from the pit madness that lives on through him.

  
(While Jason sleeps, Talia takes one of the daggers in the set and leaves them with one of the League. Tells them to leave it on Damian bedside, tells them to go without a trace, tells them that he can’t know and that she will have their head if he does. They nod, and she dismisses them.)

 

She doesn’t want to, but Jason is waining, coming to truths with the Joker’s life. She had thought the pit’s madness would be enough to force him to stay, that it would force him to hold on just a little longer, before she sets him out in the world to die again. But she catches Jason eyes flicker to the door, catches the looks he makes at the map of Nanda Parbat, and the circles around his room when he thinks no one’s watching.

 

She doesn’t want to but she need’s too and she repeats that in her mind, like a mantra when she shows Jason the pictures of Robin flying through the sky. Doomed to be Reborn again. He closes his eyes to Talia, stops reading his lips, and puts his face in his hands. She doesn’t want to hurt the boy, feel’s the way her chest tightens when his fingers leave marks on his skin.

 

He won’t hear it, or lifts his head up to read her lips, but she does it anyway, does it because it’s the right thing to do, does it because she feels compelled to. Presses her fingers to Jason’s shoulders, softly, like she would Damian when he needed bandages, and she means it when she says, “I am sorry, Jason.”

 

The boy says nothing, Jason says nothing, just holds the picture in his hands, like he’s afraid to dent the paper and twist his lips as he stares at the familiarity of the green and red.

 

(Perhaps he is. Talia knows what it’s like to want a family, to pray for the universe for something, and watch it tear what little you have from your arms.)

 

“Want do you want, Jason?”

 

“I want to make Bruce pay.”

 

(She give him what he wants. She gives him his outlet that he needs.)

 

She catches him in the library, the one of many in Nanda Parbat, picking books out of the shelves, there are many in his hands, piled high enough that he must peak through to get to the next section. Around them, there is no one. The league’s library has always been empty, even for those wishing to study, not that it isn't grand, not that it doesn't live forward in memory of what Nanda Parbat was and is, still to this day. 

 

“What are you reading, Jason?” The boy had stared at her, eyes wide -a unveiled  masks of Shiva’s face, had the sharp cheekbones and eyes, the freckles too, but most were passable at quick glance. Not unless you held both side to side, not unless you seen both side to side. “I am not here to reprimand, just inquire.”

 

Jason frowns, tightens his hold on the book like she’s afraid that she might snatch it out of his arms,  “The history of Nepal and-”

 

She nods, but it is not what he should be reading, not what should be going through his mind. Her time with him is limited, too soon might Bruce goes to his grave, and finds the remains of what Talia had tried to clean. And if not him, then Ra out of anger and hatred slash's a knife through the boy's throat. She can not fool herself into the illusion that she has time.

 

She picks a book from the shelf, places it on the table beside him, the font is clean, not worn with age and Jason stares at it, eyes trained on the clean back of the leather before Talia makes a motion for him to open it. He takes a moment, lets the picture digest, the words even longer. Wet Work is harsh, but she needs him to learn, even if it is just peering at pictures.

 

Talia nods, when Jason flips through it, a feeling of being content wrapped around her belly. “I have high hopes for you.” and Jason doesn’t respond, but she feels his eyes bore into her face and feels his eyes linger over each word. “Do not disappoint me, Jason.”

 

(She cares for Jason like he is her blood. She can admit that now.)

 

“You are holding back,” Talia signs, and Jason stares at her from the mats, his teacher isn’t moving anymore, breathing through the shallows of her collapsed lung, and Talia could tell Jason is scattering, that something inside of him is burning, is itching to leave, is itching to choose the path the universe had long since closed off and Talia heart aches for him, but she is no angel, no goddess and she can not reopen paths herself. She almost mises it when Jason says, “No one’s holding back, nothing.”

 

“You are. Jason.We can only be measured by our crime.” Talia signs back, and She watches him tighten her hold on his neck, watches his eyes flicker between her and his teacher, watches the universe struggling to cement itself. and Talia know he won’t do it, knows that it’s not life or death. That it’s Jason conscious, and Talia does what she needs to, says what she needs to. watch “Kill her Jason. Like she had killed countless of others before you.”  

 

“If you can not kill her, how do you expect to kill the Joker?” Talia signs, “How could you expect Bruce to do it?”

 

(She stays with Jason afterwards when they take the body from the ground. Watches the way he tries to hide the way his hand shakes. Watches the way he looks at the death and the destruction around him. She leaves the last set of her blade with him, encrusted gold and green. And mourns the path he had chosen.)

 

“Why do you care about me?” Jason signs. He had been too slow to duck Senseis knives and one had embed itself in the thin meat of his shoulders. And Talia wraps the bandage tight around the cut, hears the pleas in his voice, hears the want to belong, and she wraps each of her fingers against the pattern of the cloth, and presses hard, enough that Jason hands grip onto the edge of the seat. The world is insolent to people who care, and it would be a shame to see Jason fall so quickly again.

 

She does not bother with talking, knows that it expends more energy than Jason has right now to read her lips then to read her signs and stands in front of him so that he can read. And she presses her fingers to her chest, and feels like a leaf under heavy rain.“I don’t. You are a investment.”

 

She doesn’t mean it, but it’s easier for Jason this way. Life’s easier for Jason this way. Her gut clinches when he looks away, and she tries to tie his bandage softly, tries hard not to cause him more pain then she has too. The world is harsh, but she must be harsher if she expects Jason to survive out there.

 

(She pushes his training back a night, lets him rest. There is guilt deep in her soul, guilt pressed against the curve of where it meets her heart and her lungs. But Talia does not regret her actions. She is not her Beloved and Jason will not die on her watch. )

 

“Mother,” Damian greets her, and she smiles down at the boy, and set her tea aside. Damian is growing, climbing closer to the edge of pre teen years, and Talia heart wrenches in a way that makes her chest aches, she wish she could wrap her arms around Damian, be the mother, young Talia had always wanted. “Where have you been? Grandfather is angry.”

 

Talia raises an eyebrow, but does nothing at the remark. Ra is always angry, is always mad and it’s better, Talia thinks that Damian see’s it now then later.“I have been busy with the league.” Damian takes a seat in one of the chairs beside her, not quite tall enough that his feet do not dangle. It is charming, Talia thinks, how small the boy is compared to his father. “How is you're training, Damian? You must have started.”

 

“Ttt. They are underwhelming.”  And Talia laughs and presses her fingers to Damian’s arms, softly, like they shouldn’t be there, like she shouldn’t be there, like she’s a ghost, drifting endlessly and forever. She ignores the way Damian leans into the touch, too eager, to grateful, and she moves her hands away just as quickly. 

 

(Talia takes joy in the way Damian does not mind her pestering questions, takes happiness in the way his eye lights up when she mentions that she is staying, and takes passion in the way it reminds her so heavily of her beloved.)

 

Jason’s still angry, committed to overcoming Bruce, letting the Pit drive him and Talia presses her fingers to her eyes, and she gives him more teachers, more techniques and hopes the Pit washes away in time. Time has never been Talia’s saint, but she prays to it now, hopes that someone out there takes pity on her. Pray’s that Jason heals himself before his plans come to head. She has no intention of letting her Beloved or Jason die by each other’s hands. 

 

(Talia knows now, knows the pain that comes with Children. Knows that Shiva made a choice, knows that Shiva has to live with it and knows that must cause Shiva more pain than anything else.)

 

But Jason is not her child by blood, a child by heart, and the Universe is cruel, a unbridden women in a game of love and war.  And Talia’s alone, she’s always alone, her Beloved is gone, angry with her, for doing what she has deemed right, and not what the law says. But Talia does not obey any law, the world doesn’t, and Talia does not see why she should. So, she basks in the loneliness, and watches Damian from afar, and thinks of the way he seems to favor his right to his left. 

 

He will need to be trained out of it if she wants him go any further.

 

It’s Shiva who finds her, finds Talia sitting, fingers splayed out on the Al Ghul Crescent, drinking tea under the droplets of dew under her favorite tree. Outside, the sun is setting, casting the garden in waves of gold and green, waves of holes that she carves into her skin. It’s Shiva who sits across from her, takes one look at Damian through the fields, and says. “Congratulations are in order.”

 

“Thank you.” Talia says, and she waits, waits because she is a patient women, and Shiva goes nowhere without a plan, without something else that she wants, and Talia chest clenches and unclenches when Shiva hums. “Would you like some tea?”

 

“I would like to offer training with your Champion,” Shiva says, and Talia thinks of Jason, thinks of the name he had carved for himself, thinks of the boy inside of Gotham with a tattered sweatshirt, and holes in his pants, staring at her, empty and soulless,. Her mouth carves around the word, _No_. Thinks of saying that he’s trained enough, but Talia’s know that he isn’t, knows that she only hit the surface of what he can become and she nod’s.

 

“I will send him to you, packed and prepared.”

 

(And Somewhere out there, a single drop of dew falls from the highest leaf on a tree.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how this Fic came about, other then Deaf Jason really be out here doing Gods work. You can catch me on tumblr [@theredshood](http://theredshood.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk about Jason (9/10 I will cry, that boy deserves better then you DC.)


End file.
